You Have No Time For Things You Do Not Really Want To Do

I wonder how many times you have heard or used this phrase in the last week. It’s the perfect excuse for not attending to important things in our lives, it is legitimate and sort of acceptable in today’s culture to be overly busy and consumed and "have no time".

Yet, are we not each given a total of 24 hours in a day? No more, no less (well, let’s not get too technical here). So why don’t we have the time that others seem to possess? Where have all your time gone to? What time management techniques would help you improve your time management skills?

You have time to read and forward bulk emails, watch movies, play games and take quizzes on face book or just “network” on social media. I am not sure how much time your spent on those, but that may be something interesting to find out.

That seems to indicate that you do have time for the stuff you want to do but may not have time for the stuff you do not really want to do. So maybe I can rephrase the all time excuse from “I have no time” to “I have no time for things that I don’t really want to do”. That would give a new perspective.

Are we then victims of this elusive thing called "time"? Why can some achieve much more than others given the same amount of time? I can already hear a chorus of reasons: "They don’t have children to take care of", or "Their work is less demanding", or "I have so much to do, so many projects on hand with such tight deadlines!" and of course the "You won’t understand" will beat it all.

So what are you going to do about this? Will you accept it as a fact of life? Or will you reach out and seek for effective time management to help you make every hour of your life count towards achieving your goal and dream? Will you be open to consider a new way of living where you will be in control of time instead of having it control you?

My suggestion for you is to chart out time duration that you spend for things that you do in a day over a week. And note where the time has gone to. Chart that out over a month to see a more consistent pattern and then ask yourself if you are spending the time on things that matter the most to you.

Since you cannot increase the amount of time in day, you will need to look at prioritising the way you spend the limited time on hand. If you want to start a home business while doing a full time job and balancing that with a family, then you really want to guard the time you have on hand. These are precious commodity that you cannot afford to waste.

Chart out times you want to spend with the family, make appointments with yourself for building your own business, put in planned time for pampering and self care and yes, you will also have to let go of some of the things that do not contribute to building the life that you want. And whatever you do, enjoy doing it so that every moment of your life is lived to the fullest.

Glad to see you here! And thanks for your methodological analysis. I like your systematic way of working this out, you leave nothing to chances!

It is true that we do not have much time. Only thing is I can now ay I have no time (without guilt) – to the things that I do not want to do, that do not build me up nor prepare me for the life I want.

And so in turn, I can say “Oh Yes I will make time for the things that will build me up, and prepare me for the life I want!”

Hey Louisa, once again you and I are on the same page! I was thinking of this time conundrum too…
I was just reading that if we sleep 8hrs/day (which in a busy life this is generous) that leaves us 112 hrs. in the week remaining, then if we work 40hrs/week, we have 72 hrs. remaining. If we commute to work an hour each way we have 62 hours remaining, let’s add eating for another 2 hrs/day and that leaves us 48 hrs, take another 2 hrs/day for family and entertainment… 34 hrs., and for good measure add another 2 hrs/day miscellaneous and we are left with 20 hours a week!!! That’s a lot! Yet having no time remains a leading excuse for more things to not get done!